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Tuesday, 9 September 2014

Why is naive a dirty word?

Do you know what I've been thinking? There aren't enough naked ladies on the internet. Don't worry though, I'm on it. I've taken to sacrificing barbie dolls over the gas hob whilst chanting invocations to the God of incognito browsing. I mean, will someone please think of the adolescent boys?

My doll-burning tendencies have stopped now though, and not just because I'm getting a little fed up of scraping gobbets of melted plastic out of my risotto. Nope, my efforts are temporarily redundant. There are more naked ladies. There definitely weren't enough already.Some charming individual found the naked pictures of some well known ladies and decided to drag them, kicking and screaming into the harsh strip lights of the internet. So the internet was up by the bare breasts of several people I had never heard of (given that my pop culture frame of reference is about as up to date as Quasimodo's). And the bare breasts of one particular lady that even I had heard of. It was this particular lady who caught most of the stones being thrown from glass pagodas.There were a fair few people who congratulated the hacker on providing such a sterling service to the world. Yeah, g'wan yersel! You steal those personal and private moments from another human being! You make girls in the public eye feel like there's nowhere to hide unless they lock themselves in a darkened cupboard and live off moth-balls and old boots. And, all the while you can fuel the sense that once a women has a job in entertainment, her body is public property, to be fantasised over and obsessed over and picked over until there's nothing left for her. LAD!Ahem.These people are not my least favourite people though. Because I get that if you don't stop and think, then it's just a naked picture of someone who you are used to seeing pictures of. The repercussions for these women in having their privacy ripped out from under them may not donk you on the head immediately.My least favourite people are the faux-concerned lot. The ones who say 'Oh, God yes, it's awful, but she should have known not to take that sort of picture.' There are substantially ruder variations of this, without the sympathy, but they mostly contain the sort of words I refuse to have on my blog, in my mouth or in my head.So, it's her fault is it? She should have known it was going to happen and protected herself better?Sounds fair eno- oh, no, wait it doesn't sound fair enough. Not at all.Firstly, people can take pictures in their spare time of whatever the hell they would like to, so long as they're not hurting anyone. People like taking pictures: to the point where meal documentation has become a legitimate hobby for a goodly part of the population. If they want to take their clothes off and take pictures, that's grand. Hopefully they crank up the thermostats first, but if they don't the goosebumps are there own look-out.These ladies have done nothing wrong. I can't emphasise that enough. Nothing. Wrong. Unlike the person who hacked into their private files and stole their private photos.*'But,' say the faux-concerned legion, 'it's kind of naive, isn't it? Not having these photos in a fire-proof safe guarded by dragons?'And I would like to sit down with this people, pour them a nice cup of tea** and ask them this: 'Why need that be a bad thing?'Naive, in this context can be roughly translated to believing the best of people. And surely that's something we only want more of? Naive is often conflated with stupid, but I believe that it's an entirely different thing. Yes, we live in an imperfect world. But knowing this is not incompatible with knowing that most people, when you get right down to it, and fundamentally and generally good.There is much to be said for being cynical and streetwise and suspicious too. The world needs those who beadily look through the small print and are careful with their hearts.***But we also need those that bound up to the world with an open heart and give it a big hug. So rather than blaming these people when they get stabbed in the gut, I vote we stick to blaming the guy holding the knife.What do you think, dear reader?PS: This post is a picture free zone. We don't care whether you're wearing a spacesuit or nothing but strawberry jam here, so the blogpost is going naked in solidarity.*Who, incidentally, is now complaining about his lack of privacy, So we can add charmingly self aware to his long list of low-life qualities.**disclaimer: tea may or may not be laced with arsenic, depending on mood and supplies*** They're mostly called lawyers. OOH, career stereotype satire!

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About Me

I'm Anna.
I'm working on being an enigma. Progress so far is minimal.
If you would like to talk to me, you can get me on a.l.ibbotson@gmail.com or I'm on twitter @AnnaIbbotson.
Please only talk to me if you're a human or a robot with a lot of interesting ideas though!